The ordinary or common form of machine vise provided to hold and support pieces of work in predetermined position in a related machine tool, preparatory to and while being worked upon, includes an elongate longitudinal bed with front and rear ends and longitudinally extending rails, a fixed or stationary jaw with a flat vertical face disposed longitudinally rearwardly projecting upwardly from one end of the bed, an upwardly projecting movable jaw with a flat vertical longitudinally forwardly disposed face rearward of the fixed jaw and having guideways slidably engaged with the rails of the bed; and manually operable screw means carried by the bed, rearward of the movable jaw and engaging said movable jaw to move that jaw longitudinally toward and away from the fixed jaw, as desired, or as circumstances require.
Further, in practice, the ordinary or conventional machine vise of the character referred to above is provided with removable and/or replaceable jaw plates, which plates are arranged in flat bearing engagement on the noted faces of the vise jaws and are releasably secured thereto by screw fastener means.
Machine vises of the character or class referred to above are widely used throughout the art of machining and are well known to those who are familiar with the art to which the present invention relates.
In the course of using vises of the character referred to above, the beds of the vises are suitably arranged and supported on the work tables or the like of related machine tools and the pieces of work to be worked upon by the cutting means of the machine tools are manually arranged in desired predetermined relationship relative to the stationary jaw and the movable jaw is thereafter advanced towards and into engagement with the piece of work, by manually operating the screw means of the vise.
The above procedure of arranging and clamping a piece of work in a vise must, as a general rule, be carried out with great care and skill since the piece of work must be supported by the vise in precise predetermined position within the working area of its related machine tool, before it is worked upon. As a result of the foregoing, the noted procedure is time consuming and therefore extremely costly.
In practice, where a plurality of like places of work are to be worked upon in and by a machine tool, the machine vise is mounted on the work table of the machine tool with its stationary jaw in fixed predetermined position relative thereto and so that when the work pieces are arranged between the jaws, the machinist only needs to manually adjust the positioning of the work pieces laterally and vertically relative to the fixed jaw, preparatory to advancing the movable jaw into clamped engagement with it. This modified procedure often materially reduces set-up time, that is the time required to effect positioning and clamping of a piece of work within the vise and relative to a related machine tool.
When a large number of like pieces of work are to be worked upon and to further reduce the set-up time, skilled machinists frequently make and arrange "steady rest" blocks and the like on the beds of the vises, between the jaws thereof, to stop and support the pieces of work in predetermined vertical position between the vise jaws, whereby they need only concern themselves with lateral positioning of the work pieces, when setting up the work.
While the last noted modified procedure and use of separate steady rest means is effective to further reduce set-up time, it is only practiced when the number of pieces of work to be worked upon is sufficient to justify the time and expense that is required to make a suitable steady rest structure and/or means.
As a general rule, when the number of pieces of work is sufficient to justify the making of special steady rest means for use within machine vises, the time and expense in producing full production tooling is generally warranted and the use of a conventional machine vise is dispensed with.
Prior to the present invention, the prior art has failed to provide procedures and/or means which are both economically feasible and practical to simplify and speed the time required to set up a few or limited number of pieces of work in a machine vise.